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Controversial! Fun And Also Games! First Comic Book related blog to be featured in the Australian National Library's Pandora archive. Pop culture, music, film and comic book expert. Would be willing to write for biscuits.
2016, 2017 Rondo Award nominee.
Proudly annoying people since 2003.
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Why Newton never did more Kung-Fu titles is beyond me. The Kung-Fu craze was in full swing in Australia, as it was world-wide, in the mid 1970s, buoyed by the success of the few Bruce Lee movies and the television series Kung-Fu starring David Carradine. Despite Marvel having kung-fu titles since 1974 and thus a rich supply of stories, Newton only published a mere four issues of the title and that was towards the end of the company's life and as such missed the chance to exploit a new trend.

Of interest is that the title, The Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu, the cover design/lay-out and logo were later used by the Murray Publishing imprint Kenmure. Despite sharing the title, similar painted covers and even an illustration of Shang-Chi on the title page, the Kenmure title featured no Marvel content at all, relying on Charlton material and obscure European/Spanish material - all going well we'll cover that later. Hence some people have long believed that there were more than four Newtons…

Well that's been a lot of fun. Just so people know I've updated the individual posts with the artists that people have spotted. In the case of Dick Ayers, he's done his own spotting and has confirmed his work. So far it's been established that a lot of those early covers were done by Jim Starlin, with a variety of inkers. I know that Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito did a lot of the inking over the years for the UK editions, and now it appears that Joe Sinnott did more than his fair share of the work as well. Slowly it'll all be unravelled.

For those who like this stuff Nigel Kitching has posted the first ten Mighty World Of Marvel covers for people to see. There's some great stuff in there and I'm as jealous as hell that Nigel has those first ten covers, let alone on display. Go there, now, and have a look - you'll love it.

This arrived late last week from Herb Trimpe. I like Herb, he's a lovely guy and has some very sound, strong opinions. Herb was one of the first artists that I interviewed, because he was at the top of my original list (and still is) and he couldn't have been nicer. So once I read the email I knew that I wanted to share this with more than just Herb's mailing list, so with his permission here's the message.--------------------------------Greetings, fans and others.

First, although I don't send blanket emails very often, if you want to get off my list of comic book email contacts list, please give me a holler. Second, if you are interested in the world of comics, are a real fan and have paid and gotten commissioned art work from me, or know of others who might be interested in commissioned artwork, be advised: you can get commissions directly from me without paying the higher prices that are being asked of those reselling on Ebay.

Back again. It was a very productive weekend in Melbourne, loads of fun and as usual I came home with about two boxes of comics and about the same in books. Caught up with a pile of people whom I both know and met for the first time - I was both surprised and pleased with the amount of people who commented on the Newton material and said that they're keen to see more. Keep looking, more Newtons will be posted by the weekend. I've come back to find about 600 emails, so if I don't reply to anything sent then re-send it because I may have deleted it by accident. There was good news to come back to as well, but more on that later once contracts have been sealed up.

On that front...Newtons were scarce this trip, but I did manage to track down some Tomb Of Draculas - including issue #1 - along with a near complete run of Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu, the Silver Surfer one-shot and the first issue of Science Fiction. More details/scans to come. In short I picked up enough to warrant us…